Michael Jackson�s career began with his voice but was transformed by his visuals. His ascent as King of Pop coincided with the rise of the music video, and it was through those videos that he stamped his image on the world. Michael Jackson�s Vision is the first DVD set to collect all of Jackson�s videos and short films, some of them previously unreleased or seldom seen since their origina...

On a Broadway littered with silly trash, Passing Strange was an outstanding production from the decade just ending. A musical by Stew (with Heidi Rodewald), Passing Strange is the semi-autobiographical story of an African American coming of age in the late �70s who transcends all stereotypes and overspills every perceived boundary. Raised in middle class Los Angeles, the protagonist (called Yout...

Spike Lee has been fighting World War II long before the release of his latest film, Miracle at St. Anna. His campaign began with a salvo at Clint Eastwood for excluding black faces from Flags of Our Fathers and perpetuating the assumption that blacks contributed little to the U.S. victory. It was not the movie Eastwood wanted to make and the sniping between the two directors probably served to harden Lee's resolve.

I am an unabashed admirer of Spike Lee movies, especially Do the Right Thing (1989) and Malcolm X (1992). His achievements as a director are among the most notable of the last 20 years. Thus, I took to heart Lee’s recent criticism of Clint Eastwood for failing to use black actors in Flags of Our Fathers and its companion piece, Letters from Iwo Jima (both 2006). In fact, some 900 blacks participated in this bloody World War II battle, including my late uncle, Lonnie Brake, a U.S. Marine from Milwaukee. On the whole, though, Eastwood has an admirable record . . .

The 2000 satire Bamboozled may not be one of Spike Lee’s most acclaimed films, but it’s certainly one of his most poignant. A scathing send-up of race s in popular culture—and perhaps a direct response to the UPN sitcoms of the late ’90s like “Homeboys in Outer Space” and “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer . . .

There’s an uncomfortable misogyny to later-day Spike Lee films like She Hate Me, but Lee’s first major film, 1986’s She’s Gotta Have It, approached female sexuality in a manner truly progressive for the time. Tracy Camilla Johns plays a woman in control of her sexuality, happily dating three very different men. The UWM . . .